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expected a people surrounded by luxuriant rampant flora to leave flower motifs behind on their stone relief as well. Yet the loathsome snake confronts us everywhere. From time immemorial the snake has wound its way through the dust and dirt of the earth. Why should anyone conceive of endowing it with the ability to fly? Primaeval image of evil, the snake is condemned to crawl. How could anyone worship this repulsive creature as a god and why could it fly into the bargain? Among the Mayas it could. The god Kukulkan (= Kukumatz) presumably corresponds to the figure of the later god Quetzelcoatl. What does the Mayan legend tell us about this Quetzelcoatl? He came from an unknown country of the rising sun in a white robe, and he wore a beard. He taught the people all the sciences, arts and customs and left very wise laws. It was said that under his direction corn-cobs grew as big as a man and that cotton grew already coloured. When Quetzlcoatl had fulfilled his mission, he returned to the sea, preaching his teaching en route, and boarded a ship there which took him to the morning star. It is almost embarrassing for me to mention in addition that the bearded Quetzelcoatl also promised to return. Naturally there is no lack of explanations for the appearance of the wise old man. A kind of Messianic role is attributed to him, for a man with a beard is not an everyday occurrence in these latitudes. There is even a daring version which suggests that the old Quetzelcoatl was an earlier Jesus! That does not convince me. Anyone who arrived among the Mayas from the ancient world would have known about the wheel for transporting men and objects. Surely one of the first actions of a sage, a god like Quetzelcoatl, who appeared as missionary, law-giver, doctor and adviser on many practical aspects of life, would have been to instruct the poor Mayas in the use of the wheel and the cart. In fact the Mayas In 1900 Greek sponge divers found an old wreck loaded with marble and bronze statues off Antikythera. These art treasures were rescued and subsequent investigations showed that the ship must have foundered around the time of Christ. When all the plunder was sorted out, it included a shapeless lump that proved more important than all the statues put together. When it had been carefully treated, scholars discovered a sheet of bronze with circles, inscriptions and cog wheels and soon realised that the inscriptions must be connected with astronomy. When the many separate parts were cleaned, a strange construction came to light, a regular machine with movable pointers, complicated scales or dials and metal plates with writing on. The reconstructed machine had more than twenty little wheels, a kind of differential gear and a crown wheel. On one side there was a spindle that set all the dials in motion at varying speeds as soon as it was turned. The pointers were protected by bronze covers on which long inscriptions could be read. In the case of this 'machine from Antikythera’, is there the slightest doubt that first-class precision mechanics were at work in antiquity? Moreover the machine is so complicated that it was probably not the first of its kind. The American Professor Solla Price interpreted the apparatus as a kind of calculating machine with the help of which the movements of the moon, the sun and probably other planets could be worked out. The fact that the machine gives the year of its construction as 82 B.C. is not so important. It would be more interesting to find out who built the first model of this machine, this small-scale planetarium! never used either. Let us complete the intellectual confusion with a compendium of oddities from the dim past.